Se un gatto nero ti passa davanti
by flintshine
Summary: Written for Rainpuddle's Great Spring DG Contest 2007. Ginny's looking for a job. Definitely DG.


Title: Se un gatto nero ti passa davanti… (A love story, with pasta, pistacchio ice-cream and potatoes.)

Authors: Costanza and Emily Ray

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Some swearing and references to sex. Nothing actually graphic.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Notes: Translation notes can be found at the bottom, and Emily, beta-reader turned co-writer, is amazing. We've had so much fun with this, hope you enjoy the result!

I.

The night before the end of everything, Harry tells Ginny he loves her.

II.

Everything ends.

III.

The night after the night before the end of everything, Ginny catches Harry a little bit tipsy from the celebrations, sprawled on a bed in the Burrow's guest room and sucking face with her brother Charlie.

Charlie doesn't even look much like her. It's just _embarrassing._

IV.

Ginny doesn't talk to her mum. Ginny doesn't talk to her brothers. Ginny certainly doesn't talk to Hermione. She does talk to Charlie, just to tell him it's all right. He's guilt-stricken. She finds that she doesn't much care. She talks to Ron, too, and tells him to keep an eye on Harry.

The last person anyone sees Ginny talking to is Madam Rosmerta.

V.

The day the priceless Coronet d'Ys is stolen from its place of honour in the Musée Eternal in Paris is also the last day that anyone sees Draco Malfoy.

Since no one still alive cares about Draco Malfoy, it's the theft that holds pride of place in the headlines. The photograph Colin Creevey takes becomes famous across wizarding Europe: the room full of baffled Gardiens, the untouched bars holding the wards together, the glass case, the velvet cushion. The empty velvet cushion, still with the faded white imprint metal occasionally leaves on velvet after a very long time.

Two weeks later there's another theft, this time in Florence. The silver-chased goblet is snatched out from under wards that Lucrezia Borgia set herself. The Protettore interviewed by the Daily Prophet's one Italian speaker confesses that authorities are baffled. The pattern of the two crimes is identical.

BLACK CAT STRIKES AGAIN, say the headlines.

(Malfoy sells his ancestral home to a pair of nouveaux-riches and buys himself a villa in Tuscany with the profits. The transaction is conducted entirely via owl.)

(Harry stops sleeping and sets every Auror in the office searching the country for Ginny, who is nowhere to be found. A few weeks after that Mrs Weasley gets a letter telling her not to worry. The owl leaves before it can be traced. Charlie bites his lip and goes back to Romania, unable to face his family.)

(Both coronet and goblet end up in the private collection of an eminent gentleman with deep pockets and a rather nice little house in Devon.)

VI.

Ginny Weasley doesn't have her own house or flat. At the moment, she's living in two cramped rooms and a bathroom over a Chinese restaurant in Soho, but it's the end of June and in a few days her rent will run out and she'll be on her way. She's not sad - the landlord is a sleaze and even the smell of Chinese food, which she loves, gets to be too much eventually.

She's conscious of a scratchy edge of boredom, the thought that if she wanted to she could take the right turning off Charing Cross Road and stop into the Leaky Cauldron for a Firewhiskey. Or she could dial M for magic in just the right phonebox and drop in on Percy at work. It's a tempting thought – too tempting. She isn't ready to leave her new life yet. She needs something to do.

(Lately, her new life consists of nothing but eating heated-up paninis from the Starbucks on the other side of the road, drinking chocolate soy milk, watching people hurrying along Gerrard Street. Occasionally she takes walks herself- around Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Covent Garden; sometimes she walks all the way to Kensington or Notting Hill, through Hyde Park which is lovely at this time of the year. At nights she lies on the sofabed in the least grotty of her three rooms and thinks: maybe I am a little bit lonely. Just a little bit.)

In Piccadilly Circus, the lighted adverts flash day and night, night and day, like the slashes of light that ring across a battle of spells, and a bright orange Easyjet advert catches her eye. The rent runs out and three days later, she's on a Muggle plane ready for take-off, with a one-way ticket to Florence, Italy.

VII.

What she needs, really, is a job, she thinks - fastening her seatbelt when the sign flicks on for landing. Maybe she should get in touch with whoever runs the scene now. Last time she was in Florence it was Marco but she seems to remember someone hiring a hit from the Hungarian agency and it being all over the news.

Her fingers itch. Something challenging is what she wants, something unusual. Rosie's got no open commissions from any of their usual collectors, but there are always rich people somewhere who want something they can't have. Perhaps it was time to take a risk on one of their shadier contacts?

When she gets into the centre of Florence, she checks in into a dingy little hotel, buys a phonecard at a newspaper stand and makes a few calls. Benefits aside, when you really got down to it, it was the thrill of it that mattered, the rush of a job well done. She knows she can look after herself. The risk was the fun of it, for a Gryffindor.

(That, and the satisfaction of signing off the cheque when she was done.)

VIII.

She puts on her lowest-cut robes, steps into a bar and flirts with the barrio until he gives her the address of a different, rather more exclusive bar, where she bends low over the pool table as she chats with local magical crime bosses. She finds herself, surprisingly, missing Marco, a seedy old man who'd commissioned her second-ever job. His replacement is apparently not the kind who mingles with out-of-towners.

She flirts with a lot of men her mother would be horrified by, and one or two whom Molly Weasley would never even realise were criminals, so smooth-spoken and stylish they are. There are a few women, a very few – Ginny abandons her flirting when they come in, is unfailingly polite instead, but it makes no difference. No one offers her a job, because there's no job to be had.

(One man offers her something else, but she shakes her head with a flash of toothy smile, her hand on her wand. That's not what she's after today.)

Florence isn't going to provide her with the opportunity she's looking for, but Ginny finds she doesn't want to leave Italy, not just yet, not after London. In any case, she's got nowhere to go, and the sun is glorious on her skin and does exciting things to the colour of her hair. She spends almost all the money she has left on a bright red Vespa to match it, and tells herself she's going to Rome.

Ending up in the countryside, she stays in cheap rooms in Muggle houses which would have been seedy in any other part of the world, but here, in Italy, are cosier than anywhere she's slept in years. The families she stays with are lovely and treat her like a long-lost visiting cousin, and she is eerily reminded of the Burrow. There are silver baubles on the coffee tables and counters, which she doesn't take with her on her way out.

(These people are good people. And the silver wouldn't fetch much anyway.)

And then, just as Ginny is approaching the seaside, she unexpectedly runs out of petrol. On closer inspection, she realises the tank of the Vespa must have been leaking for a while now, and mutters a hex for the Muggle dealer who sold it to her under her breath.

IX.

This is how Ginny finds herself stuck on an utterly deserted country lane in the middle of Tuscany under the burning July sun, and without a petrol station or another car in sight. She begins to push her Vespa before her, and walks the way she was going. Eventually she comes to a small town- a village, even, a few streets criss-crossing in quaint disorganisation- at dusk. She is sweaty, aching and sunburnt, and so glad for the slightly salty breeze that cools down her face as the sun sets.

It's the kind of tiny place in which everybody knows everybody else and nobody locks their door. It has an inn, a couple of _trattorie_, and a couple more shops, as well as a church with a _piazza_ in front of it; a bar, a newspaper stand and a fountain. It certainly doesn't have a petrol station. Ginny leans her Vespa against a convenient wall, and goes inside the inn to ask a couple of questions. Of course they have a room, the rate is excellent, but they're very sorry, the nearest petrol station is in the next village over and it's closed until next Tuesday unfortunately because Monday is the day of the village's patron saint, so everyone's on holiday. Still, that's only three days and their village is beautiful, as are the plains around it and you can go on a day out and reach the sea if you'd like. Something can be arranged, they're sure.

Ginny is too tired to even be annoyed; she has a cold, soothing shower and slips into the cool sheets of her bed, falling asleep immediately.

X.

When Ginny finally wakes up, makes herself look presentable and makes her way downstairs, it is almost midday. There's a smiling dark-haired Muggle girl, who looks ridiculously young, wiping down the counter. (Ginny herself was probably younger when they fought the last battle of the war, but she shies away from the thought.)

The teenager greets her and brings her the best espresso she's ever tasted. "Good morning, I'm Chiara," she says in surprisingly unaccented English, casually sitting down at Ginny's table instead of going back to wiping the counter.

"I'm Ginny," says Ginny, and smiles, secretly grateful the other girl has given her an opportunity to avoid embarrassing herself with her appalling Italian. She can speak, and understand (French and Spanish, too, and Russian, and she can get by in Japanese – tricks of the trade). She just sounds very English and horribly foreign while doing it. She likes Italy. She likes Italy altogether too much to go around butchering their language.

"The coffee is excellent, thank you," she adds. Chiara grins, flattered.

"Mamma has said that you are- what is the word? - blocked here?"

"Yes, I'm stuck. My Vespa ran out of petrol and apparently there's no way to get a refill until Tuesday."

A nod. "Yes. But don't worry," (grinning impishly), "there is plenty to do here while you wait. There are far worse places to get stuck in!"

By mid-afternoon Ginny – who thinks it's very funny – is the darling of Chiara's crowd. They're kids – children - home from universities and schools for the holidays (Chiara has come from England, too, Ginny discovers: she's doing political science at the London School of Economics. She says it with a kind of excited pride that Ginny can't imagine having about school. Maybe it's a Muggle thing.) The village is small, and so the young people stick together to attempt to ward off boredom during the summer holidays, sighing over the provincialism of parents who don't watch enough TV or know how to use a computer. They all regress to the age of six-and-excited when Ginny, red-haired, freckled, sunburnt and foreign, comes in to liven up the scene.

They spend the day driving around aimlessly and asking about England, and have a picnic of Nutella sandwiches on a grassy hill overlooking the village; and if they squint, they can see the see glittering of the sea in the distance. Ginny soon figures out how the group dynamic works, and is endlessly amused, because it seems that summer boredom has turned all of them into melodramatic drama queens: there are love triangles, rumours, gossip, light-hearted laughter and screaming fights and it all makes for excellent entertainment with a dash of self-deprecation as they take turns to tell her about what life is like here.

(Marco is in love with Chiara who is completely oblivious and still nursing her wounds after a painful relationship with Filippo; Lorenzo and Carla do nothing but fight and pull and fight and pull and Maura is aloof and wants to be a lawyer and the others tease her constantly; Edoardo and Lorenzo hate each other, but Edoardo is also courting Lorenzo's little sister who is the most beautiful girl Ginny has ever seen. Everything is messy, intertwined and hopelessly complicated, and Ginny laughs harder than she has in a while.)

Marco is the one who tells her about the haunted mansion half an hour's drive away towards the sea. Every two days he has to deliver momentous amounts of ham and potatoes and the occasional bread loaf, and in the many years he's been in charge of running that particular errand as his mother runs one of the village's shops, he's never once seen the owner. There are strange noises and weird lights. People talk of ghosts who scream nonsense words in the night. And the whole place reeks of money, he says. There's a giant swimming pool on the terrace and he could have sworn that the two paintings hung on the plain cream walls of the only room he's ever seen- and that's the storage room- are Italian Renaissance originals.

Now, Marco is leaving the next day back to Pisa and back to work and away from Chiara, and he thinks his heart might just shatter if he doesn't spend every last second of his last day in her presence- but he has to deliver the stupid ham and the stupid potatoes and so Ginny, who had a sixth sense for these kinds of things and still wants her risky job in spite of everything, offers to do it for him. After excessive displays of joy and gratitude, it is agreed. Ginny will drive the car with the ham and the potatoes and the bread to the villa in the hills, while Marco will declare his undying love for Chiara. Ginny sniggers at the thought as she goes back her room.

The next day is, as usual, hot and sunny, but Marco's car has air-conditioning and Ginny hums as she drives through the hills of the Tuscan landscape. As much as she's enjoyed the last couple of days in the village, it is nice to be on her own again for a while. (The Muggle teenagers and young adults are exhausting: exhaustingly happy, exhaustingly alive, exhaustingly together. She's pretty sure she was never like that, never this much a part of anything. She's also pretty sure that she's not lonely after all. If she was lonely, she wouldn't be this relieved right now, right?)

The villa when she finally gets there is breathtaking, with cream plaster walls and flower trellises climbing towards the small iron-wrought balconies at every window. It's not big and clumpy, but rather smooth and elegant, gently sloping asymmetry and a gravel path that leads to the front door; and if Ginny surreptitiously leans to the side, she can see the path leading towards the back of the house into a garden that suggests it is beautiful, and the tell-tale glimmer of light reflecting on water. She expects it's the swimming pool.

Marco's told her to leave everything in the storage room round the back, which should be unlocked. She tries the door, but it won't budge, so Ginny rings the doorbell and bangs on the door and tries everything she can think of to draw the attention of the owner. Finally she concludes that they're not home.

Grinning, she swiftly produces a trusty hairpin and picks the lock, but the door curiously still won't budge. Huh. Either some very paranoid Muggles or – she tries a whispered 'Alohomora', and it has no effect. _Huh_. A couple of useful opening spells of her own creation later (she owes at least half of one to Bill, not that he knows), the front door glows slightly and swings open noiselessly. The entrance hall isn't ostentatious, but that means nothing – really rich people hardly ever are. Ginny walks soundlessly across the room and checks the paintings – yep, originals, and in a wizarding house that she hadn't known about. A bit of exploring is obviously in order.

She drops the bags of potatoes in the corner, and is just drawing her wand to cast a Point-Me Charm when the one of the doors springs open without warning in front of her. She stifles a small squeak of surprise, and then another, slightly larger one when Draco Malfoy walks through the door.

He blinks once and then says: "I must be hallucinating. That's a _Weasley_."

Good grief_ - Malfoy_? she thinks.

"Yes, me," he says, which is how she realises she's said it out loud. "Potter stalker number one, right? What are you doing in my house, Weasel?"

It throws her off balance, a sudden flashback to her school days and her life before the end, but she's had years of practice with crime lords a lot more upsetting than a pathetic Death-Eater-turned-traitor and she recovers fast. "I'm delivering potatoes and ham. _Ferret_."

"Sure," says Malfoy. "And they just made me Pope, the delegation from the Vatican should be arriving any minute. Now, if we're quite done identifying each other as rodents, you can just get out of my house again."

Ginny is _this close _to a laughing-fit. Malfoy's still pasty-white – in this weather! – and too skinny, but his comebacks have definitely improved from what she remembers. She bites her lip on the giggle and points, mutely, to the corner where the bag of potatoes is still sitting, inoffensively, where she threw it. "Potatoes," she offers, meekly.

He stares at her. "I… all right, Weaslette, you've done your bit as a delivery girl. Tell the Ministry I'm behaving myself and _go away_."

Ginny decides she's not going to touch that misunderstanding with a ten-foot bargepole. Too many explanations. "Do you really not eat anything else?" she says.

Malfoy blinks. "What?"

"Ham and potatoes. Do you really not - "

"What do you _want_?

Ginny looks at him, standing in the entrance hall of his Italian villa in July and still wearing long sleeves. He's too skinny and he looks younger than she is, not older. He probably hasn't seen – seen anyone at all – since the war.

She makes a very quick decision.

"I can't believe you've lived in Tuscany for five years," she says, "and you still eat nothing but ham sandwiches and potatoes. In _Italy_. Merlin's beard! Live a little."

He flushes, and pulls on an irritated expression to cover it up. "Listen, Little Red Riding Hood -"

"Oh for heaven's sake. It's Ginny. And I'm taking you out for dinner."

A long pause, in which the scowl deepens and Ginny feels herself starting to smirk. "No you're _not_," he says.

"Yes I am."

"No you're not."

"Yes I – how old are we anyway? I don't work for the Ministry, by the way. In fact, I think the Aurors are still looking for me." She flutters her eyelashes at him. He looks flabbergasted.

And he grew up surprising attractive, if you didn't mind pointy, she thinks. Also, he looks nothing like Harry.

(Ginny's first two boyfriends after she left home looked like Harry. They were unmitigated disasters. Since then, she's sort of preferred blonds.)

XI.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye as she drives them back to the village in Marco's car. She's already wondering what he's going to be like in bed – not great, she suspects, if he's been living the life of a hermit all these years, but hey, men can be taught. She smirks at the thought, and notices him noticing; shifts her arm to display her cleavage a little better. She wanted a distraction, didn't she? And she's obviously not going to get to rob his house now.

Mum would be shocked. Ron would be _appalled_.

(Ginny doesn't worry about it. The whole life of crime thing, to be honest, would probably bother them more. At least - she grins - it would bother Mum more. )

They stop in front of the inn she's saying at- she briefly contemplates an actual restaurant, but Chiara's mother's cooking is fantastic. Marco is standing on the doorstep, arm around Chiara, and they're both grinning. When they see her with Draco, she can see they are dying to ask; but simply winks at them as he holds the door open for her.

Mrs Capraro is immediately sent into a frenzy when she realises Ginny has a guest, and ushers them to a cosy table on which Ginny has seen Chiara's younger sister do her homework, all the while busily nudging Ginny.

"_Bello questo, Ginevra_!" she whispers rapidly. "_Dove_ _te lo sei scovato, uno bello così? E quei capelli! Non ho mai visto un biondo del genere_!"

Ginny grins, shooting a look at Draco, who stares blankly back at her.

"_È un ex-amico di scuola. Mi è sempre piaciuto,_" she whispers back, smiling mischievously, "_E dovrebbe vedere che occhi che ha_!"

Mrs Capraro eyes Ginny knowingly. She shrugs and puts on an exaggeratedly innocent face.

"_Bè_," continues Mrs Capraro, "_Divertitevi_." Chiara chooses the moment to come in – Marco, it seems, has left. She takes in the scene, and grins - "_Mi dicono che quelli con le mani raffinate come lui c'è l'hanno lungo cosi_!" she says, with a vague gesture and a wink. Her mother scolds her and both of them bustle off, leaving a grinning Ginny to sit down with Draco at the table.

The food is excellent, of course, and there is far too much of it, but they both make a good effort. Ginny licks her lips after each forkful of pasta and makes little sighing noises when she finishes her plate, watching him chew stolidly across the table and restraining her giggles. This is _fun_. Finally he makes an exasperated sound, puts down his fork, and asks, "So what exactly are you doing here?"

The funny thing is, she barely even thinks about the answer.

"I'm a professional cat burglar and I heard your house was likely to be full of treasure." (He stares at her. Something inside her is crowing triumphantly at the expression on his face.) "Shh," she adds, when he seems to be waiting for something more. "It's a secret."

"I… ye gods, Weasley. I don't believe you."

She shrugs, waving her fork about, "Ginny, I told you. And suit yourself."

"You were going to rob me?" he asks, but she just shrugs again. "You – _you, _founder of the Boy Who Lived To Do Good fanclub, turned to a life of crime?"

"Actually, Colin founded the fanclub. Just to set the record straight. And, well, I was offered a job… and I was good at it. It seemed like a fun thing to do. So I didn't really see any reason to stop." He's still staring. "I _am_ doing good," she says defensively. "I give money to charity."

There is a very long pause. Ginny concentrates on her pasta.

"Weasley," he says finally. "I know we all went a bit nuts after the war, but this is ridiculous. You are aware, aren't you, that some small-minded people think that stealing is wrong?"

"I don't steal from poor people," she points out, perfectly fairly, she thinks.

"Oh, well, that's all right, you're Playwizard's answer to Robin Hood. Dante's hells, woman!"

She smirks, and leans forward to give him a good view, letting her voice drop a little.

"Playwizard, huh? You think so?"

Funny. She'd always thought it was only her brothers who blushed like that.

XII.

Malfoy is saved from the conversation by the arrival of dessert. Ginny feels gleeful. She's definitely getting some tonight, and it's been way, way too long. She watches him eat pistachio ice cream, and wonders if there's a way she can sneak some away from Mrs Capraro for later without having to say 'Can I borrow some ice cream to spice up my sex life?' to a woman who reminds her quite strongly of her mother. She barely tastes her own spoonfuls, which is a shame, because it's delicious.

It takes a few minutes for her to realise that there's something wrong. He's not looking at her. He's not talking. _Shit. _"Malfoy?"

"You know, if you really intend to fuck me tonight, you could try using my first name," he says. He sounds tired, not turned-on.

"Only if you use mine," she says. "And I thought we could – look, this is stupid, I gave up on tact after fourth year when it just got me invited to the Yule Ball with Neville. What's the matter?"

He wipes his hand over his eyes. "Nothing."

"_Right_."

"No, it's just – this. This is strange. You're the first person I've seen from the Order since – well."

"I'm not _from _the Order," says Ginny, unreasonably annoyed.

"It's - you remind me of the war."

Okay, so she's not getting laid tonight after all, because she forgot that Malfoy was always a _bastard_. "Thanks," she says snidely. "But let's finish off the dinner anyway, shame to waste it."

He glares at her. "You waltz in out of nowhere, you're the first person I've met in five years who even speaks _English _– of course you remind me, there's no need to be a bitch about it!"

"There's no need to spoil my evening with it either, is there?"

"I can't just – listen, Weasley, that war destroyed my home, my family – "

This has gone absolutely far enough. "Yeah, well, _that war_ also led the love of my life to discover he preferred men," she retorts. "At least I'm getting _on_ with my life."

"You're a _cat burglar_."

"It beats The Man Who Sulked as a job description, wouldn't you agree?"

They glower at each other. The ice-cream melts in its bowls.

And in the sudden horrible silence, a bizarre sound drifts across the room –Mrs Capraro singing in the kitchen, wobbling crazily on the high notes. Ginny looks away from him, and then can't help glancing back.

Their eyes meet. Malfoy's lips twitch. The need to laugh is completely irresistible. They collapse with it – Ginny shaking with giggles as he buries his grinning face in his hands. "I give up," he mutters. "I _give up_. Can we please have sex now?"

"Not until after the coffee," she tells him. "You'll like the coffee."

As Mrs Capraro bustles over to take away their empty plates, he rises politely from his chair and thanks her. "_La ringrazio_," he says smoothly, "_era tutto eccellente. Le faccio i miei complimenti_." Mrs Capraro just stares at him, and then reddens and mumbles the customary reply, adding that his Italian is outstanding. He smirks. Ginny chokes. "You speak Italian!" she says accusingly, but she's grinning.

"Why yes. Yes I do." He sounds insufferably pleased with himself.

"So you understood all that - "

"Commentary?" he supplies. "I was flattered, really. You know, you're _meant_ to be mortally embarrassed that I understood every single remark about my beautiful blond hair and perfectly chiselled cheekbones, not thinking it's hilarious."

"But it _is_ hilarious," Ginny points out between snorts of laughter.

"Oh, and let's not forget that you've always been strangely attracted to me since school," he drawls, scrunching up his face like a little boy. "Oh, and I'm a god in bed. Not that you would know anything about it, Weaselette."

She kicks back her chair as she stands up, and walks around the table to lean over him, grinning impishly. "Yet." And then she flicks his chin up with her fingers

(and it _hurts_, bloody fuck, and that's when Draco realises that Ginny Weasley is certifiable and really hot, and he's having more fun than he's had in ages and he likes her quite a bit, but he doesn't have the time to contemplate the last bit in horror because she interrupts him -)

"I'm just suddenly hugely impressed that you didn't blush at all," she says. "Not even when Mrs C said '_che c'è l'hai lungo così._'" She gestures with her hands again and grins down at him.

"What can I say? It's hardly the first time I've been complimented by a beautiful woman." He's drawling – she recognises that drawl, she _remembers _it – oh, this is even more fun than she thought it was. Also, it's completely obvious that he's got no idea what she just said. She tells him so.

Malfoy looks affronted. "Of course I understood. I'm fluent-"

"So - was she right about the length?" Ginny asks.

He splutters.

"Fluent," she concludes, "but you don't get out much. So… how about you come up to my guest-room, and I'll show you my etchings, teach you some useful phrases that they always leave out of the guidebooks –"

(It turns out the length was a couple of inches of optimism on Chiara's part, and she was right that he's not experienced as she is either – but he learns satisfyingly fast and Ginny grins to herself as she rolls over and straddles him a second time. They spend a two nights and a day together and Draco Malfoy finds himself horribly put out and horribly fascinated by this madwoman who laughs at him all the time and kisses like she never wants to stop and insists on making a ceremonial bonfire out of his stocks of potatoes and long-sleeved shirts. It's on the second night that he puts two and two together, and when he asks her, "You're the Black Cat, aren't you?" Ginny laughs and doesn't deny it, sneaking a hand down to grope him.)

(And then he wakes up the morning after the second night and Ginny is gone.)

XIII.

Draco waits for three days, and then Apparates to England.

London is just as he remembers; grey, dreary and depressing despite the July sunshine. He doesn't know the Muggle city, but Diagon Alley is almost completely unchanged when he walks down it wearing heavy, heavy Glamour to disguise his hair, his face, the ugly black Mark that festers on his arm. He doesn't see anyone he knows, unless the dark-haired man who was slumped against the wall by the Aurors' Office looking like death warmed over was Potter. It might have been. He looked old.

He doesn't even have to buy the Prophet, in the end – he can read what he needs to know just by glancing at the headlines blaring from the newspaper stand. He doesn't think he can even pronounce the formal name of the latest priceless magical artefact to have gone missing – it just looks like a sword to him, though the paper calls it a katana. The photograph shows a lovely thing, all perfect folded steel, elaborate jade dragons on the hilt. He wouldn't mind owning it himself.

It doesn't take him long to make a few discreet enquiries and spend far too much money, and he make his way to the Hog's Head, which is as seedy as ever. It makes him smile, stretching muscles that feel oddly unfamiliar.

(Before she cat-burglared her way into his life, he hadn't smiled this much in years. He'd always known that Monet would turn out to be a worthwhile investment.)

He taps his foot impatiently against the barstool, sips a shot of Firewhisky, enjoying slow burn of the liquid down the back of his throat, and he would never admit it to anybody, but he wants to find her quite badly.

Finally, a cloaked figure approaches him and sits at his table, nodding to him. He nods back and then chokes on the Firewhiskey as the woman removes her hood to reveal herself as Madam Rosmerta, smirking at him with wide, too-red lips.

"Why, Draco! It's a pleasure. It's been years."

(She knows his name. But then, she always knew everyone's name, and all the gossip, did Madam Rosmerta.)

He waits tensely for the next bit. For the war. It always comes back to the war. The middle-aged witch smiles at him sadly. "You poor boy," she says. "Smitten, hmm? It's about time someone brought her back down to earth." She hands him a bit of paper with an address written on it. She doesn't so much as glance at the place on his bare arm where the Mark is hiding, lurking under a spell, and she blows him a kiss when she leaves.

Ginny is staying in a small hotel in Kyoto, and when he comes in she's sitting cross-legged on the futon with the sheathed katana in her lap. He closes the door quietly behind him, and she looks up at the noise with a smile. Strange – she doesn't seem all that surprised as she puts the weapon aside and reaches out for him.

Later, he bites down gently where her neck meets her shoulder and whispers against her skin, "You're coming to dinner with me." They eat ramen in a tiny little restaurant next door to a Go salon, and the salarymen glance over with interest at the gaijin couple, the pretty redhead teaching her lover how to use chopsticks.

XIV.

In Tuscany, next summer, the new delivery boy still tells stories about hauntings at the mystery villa. Nowadays, though, he says the ghosts are laughing.

XV.

"So," Draco says while they're looking over the plans for the newest orphanage, "I hear that Potter the Lonely Gay Auror is hunting the Black Cat."

"Oh dear," says Ginny. "Poor Harry –"

(but that's a story for another time, because Alessandro the Hyperactive Toddler just gleefully pushed his bowl of cereal off the table.)

FINE.

Translation Notes:

The title translates as 'If a black cat crosses your path…' and the dialogue is as follows:

"_Bello questo, Ginevra! Dove te lo sei scovato, uno bello così? E quei capelli! Non ho mai visto un biondo del genere!"_ loosely translates as 'Gorgeous boy there Ginevra, where did you find one that good-looking? And that hair! I've never seen that kind of blond before!'

"_È un ex-amico di scuola. Mi è sempre piaciuto. E dovrebbe vedere che occhi che ha!" _loosely translates as 'He's an ex-schoolfriend. I always rather liked him. And you should see the eyes he's got!'

"_Bè, divertitevi."_ 'Well, have fun.'

"_Mi dicono che quelli con le mani raffinate come lui c'è l'hanno lungo cosi!"_ 'They tell me guys with hands that nice have it that long!'

"_La ringrazio, era tutto eccellente. Le faccio i miei complimenti." _Thank you, it was all excellent. My compliments.


End file.
